Arthur Russell died in 1992, leaving an enigmatic body of work that took in avant-garde composition, Indian classical music, atmospheric cello-driven pop, and most crucially, a handful of mysterious and entrancing 12" disco sides. The term "mutant disco" and "leftfield groove" had to be invented to pigeonhole Russell's forays into the embryonic NYC disco scene of the late seventies and early eighties.
Russell's original singles — released under a variety of monikers such as Dinosaur L, Loose Joints and Indian Ocean — frequently trade hands for exorbitant prices. He worked with all the important figures of the nascent disco scene, notably Walter Gibbons and Larry Levan, and he co-founded the influential Sleeping Bag records. But more importantly, his work from this period is hauntingly beautiful, showcasing artistic focus, inspiration and genius rarely heard in dance music. Aside from the odd track appearing on recent compilations such as Strut's Disco Not Disco series and Soul Jazz's New York Noise, the bulk of his catalog has remained hopelessly out of print for two decades. Soul Jazz moves to rectify this situation with the release of The World of Arthur Russell, an essential disc collecting 11 of Russell's greatest avant-disco sides. As if this weren't cause enough for celebration, Soul Jazz made the smart decision to avoid rehashing the Russell tracks already made available on recent compilations, and they include many extended versions and alternate mixes that are particularly rare. It's far from an exhaustive collection, but the brilliant re-mastering and sequencing make for ideal listening, so it's hard to complain. The peculiar genius of Arthur Russell's idiosyncratic masterpieces is enticingly intangible, and cries out for deep listening and deconstruction. Tracks like the "Schoolbell/Treehouse" and "In The Light Of The Miracle" have an oceanic soulfulness that is entirely uncanny. Russell's palette is deceptively simple: clipped percussion and polyrhythms, scattered horns, the odd guitar or cello part, impressionistic keyboard improvs and the liberal use of echo. Arthur Russell was clearly influenced by the production techniques of dub reggae, unsurprising for an artist who entitled his personal album of solo cello compositions World of Echo. Russell takes his dub influences into previously uncharted waters, however, into psychedelic territories alien to the dance floor. When Russell himself contributes vocals, his bizarre, throaty delivery is pregnant with soul and detached sexuality. The stunning "Let's Go Swimming" utilizes odd time signatures with its skewed percussive throbs, forming an unstable foundation for Russell's space-cadet muttering. The chorus echoes and reverberates, bouncing off itself and forming concentric whirlpools that resolve themselves with each atonal swell of keyboard. There is a jarring, unobvious quality to this music that makes it unpredictable; I never really know what's coming next, a true rarity in beat-oriented dance music. "In The Light Of The Miracle" is a 13-minute plus epic, vaguely African percussion and elliptical melodies which leisurely transform into a laidback tribal groove that truly hypnotizes. The abstract sexuality of "Pop Your Funk" uses fingerpicked cello as a basis for a series of random instrumental fills that hold together tenuously, constantly threatening to fall apart, but miraculously forming a tight, tense groove. The more dance-friendly Paradise Garage favorites, like Larry Levan's remix of "Is It All Over My Face?" and Francois Kevorkian's mix of "Go Bang" are clear progenitors for the diva-driven house music that dominated the 1980's. Most classic disco, even the most flawlessly realized tracks by Giorgio Moroder or Cerrone, is ultimately self-referential and dependent upon its connection to borrowed nostalgia for the excesses of Studio 54. Arthur Russell's work stands virtually alone in its ability to transcend the familiar tropes and imagery of disco - it is music wholly redolent of windswept cornfields, banks of luminous whispering clouds, vast undulating oceans and the ghostly echoes of outer space.
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